The Robotics team, consisting of Yr 12s Paige Dumbleton, Tommie Grick, Eleisha Friend and Yr 9s Jeneva Lawson and Tamzin Wallis Martin, started the year knowing they were going to be competing with New Zealand’s best teams.

St Andrews College and Christchurch Boys’ High School won first and second place at the Nationals, held in Christchurch in March 2021. However, owing to the collegial manner of Canterbury Robotics, Christchurch Boys’ High School have been tutoring our team regularly on a Wednesday after school and, on the 8th of May, it brought rewards; Jeneva and Eleisha won the first round of the Canterbury Challenge.

Christchurch Boys’ High School teacher Andrew Thawley and four students, Reuben, Janzen, Taan and Ethan worked with our students on coding and building. Their conversations about using cogs to increase the speed of their robot and default loading into the code to maintain torque were fascinating. The students had a lot of fun together racing our ‘bot’ around, trialing, tweaking and then testing it again. The combination of physics, engineering, electronics, coding and fun truly sets up our young people for the 21st Century.

Just to explain, each year a new challenge is ‘released’ across the world, meaning that students the world over are competing with the same equipment so the same challenges to make the best robot to win. This year’s international challenge will be launched at the Vodafone Innovate Centre on Sunday, the 30th of May, where our girls will be waiting with their pens poised to take notes. It is essentially a ROBOT WAR and highly bruising, where robots are toppled over and often disabled! To the victor go the spoils.

For examples of International Games, please follow these hyperlinks. The games are always introduced with the standard clawbot. Obviously, when the games are actually played, students have built their own amazing robots that are fit for purpose. The clawbots are there only for demonstration purposes.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxs0q9UoMDQ
• The look at what these Taiwanese students created to compete in the above game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9mLj33FhrU
• And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JVQOiw_OUU and then what the students made to do the game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJI29QI5COM
• And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDDGBcs0TFM
• And what the students created to make it happen! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDwXPyj-by4
• And this video just gives a great taste as to what the WORLDS are like; remember UC students that work with us at Canterbury Robotics Scrimmages have made it to the Worlds. If it were not for COVID 19, a team from Christchurch Boys and Burnside would have gone to the Worlds last year! . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6gRFgZSH00

The AGHS Robotics Team meet any and every night after school, in the Enrichment Centre, to construct their own designs from ‘meccano styled’ metal, wires, motors and drive shafts. Every three weeks, about 100 students from across Canterbury’s schools meet at St Andrews’ Library for a whole weekend day to build their ‘bots’ and scrimmage. 

These ‘Scrimmages,’ or robot battles, are arranged by Canterbury Robotics https://sites.google.com/view/canterburynzrobotics , a thriving group of educators and university students, committed to supporting young people in their coding, programming and robotic skillsets. Their link with the University of Canterbury means that Mechatronics and Engineering students volunteer each weekend to support our girls to build their best ‘bot.’ The networks forged, friendships made and learning gained by the collaborative approach is invaluable for future careers in the STEM industries.

Our team is always looking for new recruits; Burnside took 6 teams to the Nationals in Auckland in 2020!